


Malfunction

by doublejoint



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: 5 Times, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:48:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21842467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doublejoint/pseuds/doublejoint
Summary: Five times Ren doesn't kill Hux
Relationships: Armitage Hux/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 8
Kudos: 37





	Malfunction

**Author's Note:**

> warnings in the end notes because spoilers
> 
> probably (minorly) contradicts even some of the pre-tros canon, and i will be shocked if it doesn't majorly contradict tros

“General Hux.”

Snoke’s voice, normally a gravelly croak, lowers even further, as the officer in charge of Ren’s ship makes his approach. No doubt Ren will be tested on his impression of the man. He walks at a clipped pace, standard for First Order military, or at least in accordance with what Ren knows of it. He’s a little restrained, as if he wants to walk faster. His eyes sweep over Ren and betray nothing other than eyes that remind Ren of ice-caked snowdrifts and a smirk, twisted in a different way than Snoke’s is.

In the Force, his presence is quivering; he is more restrained than he looks, like a captive animal chomping at its bit, or the raw power of an overloaded vibroweapon held in a physics-defying steady hand, but more malevolent. There is darkness, not in the way of something heavy or obstructing, but it’s a complete absence of light, a void. He is frustrated, angry, eager, anxious, but he has so crudely twisted those emotions so that they drown out almost everything, including their sources.

Effective if, wicked as he is, he is having some level of treacherous thought. He’s read clearly the ambitions of the lower officers, to destroy their superiors; if one is just a few steps below Snoke then those thoughts are lethal to their bearers. Suspicion is not enough to kill on in this case, and Ren has little doubt (call it instinct) that Hux wouldn’t mind killing him.

“Supreme Leader.”

His voice is obsequious, accent like someone who had learned to speak watching the Imperial propaganda Ren’s mother had made him watch as a child to illustrate a point--better not to think about that now. Ren’s fingers curl, his leather glove straining at the seams. 

“This is my apprentice, Kylo Ren. He will be stationed with you on the  _ Finalizer. _ ”

Snoke pauses, leaning forward on his throne, as if to look closer at Hux’s pale face (the light in the throne room does no one any favors, but Hux looks as if he’s never been planetside in his life--perhaps he hasn’t, space brat, some of whoever Snoke had mentioned that isn’t important enough for Ren to keep in his memory). 

“As your co-commander.”

Hux falters, a brief half-second of white-hot disbelief, a flare in his Force presence and a cutting snarl on his wolfish face.

“Thank you, Supreme Leader.”

The fawning tone seems more openly forced. Snoke’s smile spreads on his face like smoke from a fire that’s finally caught. 

“Kylo Ren.”

“Yes, Supreme Leader.”

The vocabulator’s sound doesn’t faze Hux. Interesting.

“You will, of course, follow the General’s lead on board the destroyer. You will find him quite knowledgeable about our military.”

Hux preens and Ren scowls under the mask. He’d prefer if Hux could see it; he’d rather keep him on his toes with open animosity than have him think that he’s a nice little boy who will do what he’s told, co-commander status be damned. Maybe he should kill Hux, as soon as they get in the elevator, get rid of him and assume control, but--no. The Supreme Leader would simply assign him someone worse than a hateful toady, and Hux looks like he could be taught to fear the Force if he doesn’t already.

Ren keeps one hand on his saber in the elevator, after they’ve been dismissed together..

“The Supreme Leader would have killed me himself if he’d wanted it,” Hux says, like Ren’s the chained animal and not him. 

In that moment, Ren almost doesn’t care what Snoke wants.

* * *

He doesn’t have to care what Snoke wants when Snoke is dead, his body lying in pieces at the foot of that stupid throne, the room destroyed, and when his hand is slowly crushing Hux’s windpipe with the Force. He should have done this a long time ago, even if he would have had to apologize, deal with someone like Peavy or Canady instead. He’s already killed Snoke; he can kill Hux now—

But why should he?

Ren releases his hand; killing has such a finality, and perhaps he should have waited to do Snoke in, after he’d gotten the girl. But he’d needed her to fight off the guards. Hux is sputtering on the ground, loudly; he’s still grabbing at his throat as if to ward off the prospect of Ren finishing the job. It’s fucking pathetic.

Ren doesn’t need to get rid of Hux. He doesn’t need the  _ Finalizer _ anymore; there is no Supreme Leader above both of them. He’s won, so he will be merciful and torture Hux a little bit longer. He does have his uses (and not all to do with what Snoke had thought of him; he fits into the military in a way someone like Ren never could; he loves the power structure and the hierarchy and the military strategy that Ren will never care enough about to bother with, but will be necessary to conquer the parts of the galaxy he cannot raze personally). He won’t dare to be openly insubordinate, and it’s useless to have a witness to herald him in front of the rest of their troops. 

“Get up,” says Ren. 

Hux obeys, focusing and heeding the words through his pain, as if his survival depends on following orders. His Force presence is full of malevolence directed at Ren, much more open than it’s ever been, but what was the point of him trying to hide it? It’s not as focused as it had been just moments ago, rousing Ren from his sleep with its sharp edges making as if to devour him, sink in its teeth like a venomous snake.

This time, Ren does not need to touch his saber. Hux keeps quiet, concerned with adjusting his collar, fingers creeping to the fast-blooming bruises on his throat.

* * *

He knows it is not real as soon as he slices through the body. There is not enough resistance; this is nothing like cutting through someone’s chest in real life. It’s a vision, or a dream; his blade slides through Hux’s torso like a fresh knife through a sheet of paper, as if his body is hollow and nearly two-dimensional. The cauterized cloth, flesh, and bone is bisected as it would be if this were really Hux’s face staring at him in dumbfounded surprise, though; this is no disposable figurine. It’s as if the vision’s telling him (if this is a vision, or only a dream; Ren has forgotten how to differentiate between the two) that this should be easy. He’s telling himself it’s difficult, but it’s just like this, and Hux’s life force will drain away. 

Thisis, Ren thinks for a second, more intimate that it ever could be with Hux naked below him or on top of him, but--that’s the thought he should have, about the rawness of killing, the thought that isn’t here now. And not because it’s an illusion.

That thought rips Ren away from the sleep in disgust; his consciousness is thrown back down into the bed and his eyes snap open, thrusting off the weights keeping them shut. Hux is beside him, as he is more often than perhaps either of them would like. Oh, Ren has the upper hand, the higher position, and that disquiets Hux, that if Ren wanted him murdered he’d just do it. (Ren thinks back to an echo of words, Hux’s, he thinks, but he can’t quite place all of the syllables or the context.) There is no use now in keeping Hux on his toes; Ren knows as much as he needs to about the First Order military, and he knows that someone--perhaps without Hux’s affinity for genocidal technology, but someone--would rise to take his place. That is what ought to happen in a functioning war machine, and perhaps that’s why they don’t exist. No one wants to make themselves obsolete, even when it’s a necessary step.

He could do it, should do it, like the parable of the boy soldier and the dog he raises and loves and eats, but there is no father to slaughter Hux for Ren, and whatever this relationship is the analogy doesn’t fit well enough. Their paths have collided and they’ve become entangled like wires in the bowels of an engine room, and Ren may have to hurt himself to cut himself away from Hux (what is he in this metaphor, a burned-out hyperdrive?) and yet, he hesitates. Where is this sentimentality from, a false nostalgia for their days on Starkiller, a simpler time when Ren did not yet control his own destiny?

Fuck. He feels like fucking Skywalker, dissecting his own thoughts and memories, filtering them through something to explain, forever with teaching and learning and connecting as the end goal, pretending to never want to compete. (Okay, so maybe Ren misses competing against something other than the immovable mountain of Vader’s legacy, and the Empire’s legacy, that the simplicity of Hux’s animosity and paranoia is a small comfort. So Hux actually would be a bother to replace. But Ren is the Supreme Leader; he’ll give himself these indulgences.)

* * *

Hux’s failure reflects on Ren. It is Ren’s complacency of not replacing him; it is Ren’s foolishness for not killing him. He could do it now, should do it now, to show everyone the consequences for letting the Resistance slip through the First Order’s grip once again (and someone’s voice, deep in Ren’s mind, speaks of tightening grips before Ren pushes it to the side and off a cliff). It would be so easy to close the Force around Hux’s neck until he hears the crunch of breaking, and feels the deep void fade away until there’s no way to know it was ever there, that Hux’s presence was not as pure as the old Jedi masters’ probably were.

The Resistance had probably done more damage to the First Order than the First Order had dished out; Hux had gleefully walked right into a trap. He is not attempting to explain it away, to push someone else under the heel of Ren’s boot. He knows the failure is his, so he waits, standing far enough away that he cannot be physically touched, but no matter. 

Ren can always throw the saber, guide it with the force to spear Hux through the side, or perhaps more appropriately straight through the back, thus always to traitors (like FN-2187, who should have been blown up with the rest of the scum last night). Even if the fault lies with the ignorance of those lower on the rungs than Hux, a better commanding officer would straighten them out. 

Hux stares at Ren, as if he’s not afraid, but the idea of someone like Hux, so grounded in the physical world, who dreams of galaxies in the pale and smooth palms of his hands, embracing death after a failure is laughable. Ren can feel the fear in Hux’s presence, masked in anger and defiance; he stands from the throne and takes three steps down. Four more steps and he is in front of Hux. It’s just like him and Han Solo on that bridge on Starkiller, but they are truly alone now. He raises the saber.

Vader always choked. Vader never bothered meeting the person who had failed alone. It was as much about shame and fear as it was about destroying those who were unfit. What would privately disposing of Hux do?

Ren presses the point of the saber into Hux’s chest. Hux’s presence, like his body, is all taut like an overtuned instrument, and he can’t stop the fear from flowing out of him. But there is anger and there is focus, hate towards Ren and the Resistance and also (mainly, really) himself, and there is something sickly-sweet like concentrated honey that makes Ren want to stumble backwards before he lets the name fall from his lips out loud.

“Leave me,” he says. 

He vows not to visit Hux’s bed again, but somehow he’s there again the next night. Hux is genuinely unsurprised and a little smug about it, even when Ren pulls his hair and tells him what a failure he is. 

Hux is in the fresher afterward, immediately as always, and Ren drags a hand through his hair. He could kill Hux now, but how is that better than in the throne room, in official capacity? Choking him when he’s in his pajamas in his quarters reflects worse on Ren than it does on Hux. 

He’s still waffling; he needs to be decisive. Were Hux in his place, he would have pulled the trigger long ago (if he’d thought he could get away with it, without Ren noticing--which is probably still what’s keeping him in check now). In the end, Ren had disposed of Han Solo, and of Snoke, when he’d needed to, when the time came.

* * *

The time has long since come, Ren decides. There is nothing particular about today, but that is why it has to happen; he can’t prolong it while Hux gathers more power and stays like a tumor, preventing healthy growth. 

Hux enters the throne room as he had that first time, caged desire and anger and hate, steps very nearly a little too quick. 

“Supreme Leader.”

Ren wonders if his own smile is like Snoke’s back then, a twisted sneer of the knowledge of what is to come. But Snoke did not have enough; he only thought he did. Ren knows enough to know he does not, that the path before him is blank and unfocused, like the streaks and smudges of stars as a ship goes into Hyperspace. 

“General Hux,” says Ren.

He steps down from the throne, his hand already on his saber. Hux will know already why he’s been called; this ought not to be a surprise. He watches as Ren advances; his eyes are on the blade, and perhaps Ren could catch him off guard and choke him instead, pull the life out from him. He’s got half a mind to do it, but he’s close enough now to press the lightsaber into Hux’s sternum again, to feel as Hux all of a sudden releases all his emotions, sends his barriers crashing down and invites Ren in. The carefully but badly construed wall against Force users (that had somehow held up all these years all the same) is down; Hux is almost projecting his thoughts and feelings at Ren. Fear, anger, hate, years of suffering, sadness, anguish, hatred of himself, desperation, desire for Ren but also for what Ren has, mixed with something almost self-congratulatory. Lost in that sea is the movement of Hux’s arm, not flashy enough for Ren to notice until the blaster has fired. 

His knees buckle; he ignites the saber but Hux has already stepped back. Ren should kill him; he claws in the air for Hux’s throat but it’s so much effort just to keep himself alive. He needs to take Hux with him, to get this last kill, but he can’t focus because the pain in his side, in his head, is too much. It is already leaving him. He is nothing but a brown dwarf, a failed star that never burned, in the path of Hux’s black hole as it swallows him.

**Author's Note:**

> WARNINGS: character death, murder, graphic violence (with laser swords/guns, so gore but no blood), murder in dreams/visions, sexual references, canon-typical choking
> 
> -
> 
> it's been real kylux fandom. i'll see you all on the other side <3


End file.
